bdo gone crazy

[sheldon1]

I opened an account with the bdo bank in angeles city in april.5,000 paso to open. I took out 4,000, kept in 1,000. My wife tried to deposit 5,000 last week, she was told the account now closed cos i did not keep in 2,000. I recieved no notification about this to my address. I in uk now and they telling me to re-open again when i next go there with another 5,000.
This is very annoying as i cannot now transfer money from my uk account. So please beware if you go below 2,000 your account will be closed.

[KeithD]

Did you read the T&C? This is not really uncommon in most banks depending on the account type. The UK is one of very few countries you get free banking.

[liane]

There should be some maintaining balance, 2000 is usually just a maintaining balance for ATM account. Savings account should have at least 5k-10k maintaining. It's in the bank terms and condition that you'll have some penalty charge for going below the maintaining balance.

[SteveTalaga]

I used to do my Philippine banking with Equitable PCI and they were great. They merged with BDO and it all went down hill. I managed to stay for about a month before I got so annoyed with them that I transferred everything over to HSBC.

I use Internet banking a lot and the crazy thing with BDO is that you cant transfer money to another persons account until you have first been into the bank in person, filled out a form to authorise the receiving account and then waited for 5 days for them to set up that account in your profile

I went through this crazy process with all of the staff salary accounts and after 2 weeks of waiting was told that I would need to go back to the branch and fill in another set of forms Combine this failing (and the zero regard showed for my inconvenience) with the inability to just transfer money to a new account when I want to, because I first need to visit the branch and then wait a week and it was all too much. Bye bye BDO! my

[September]

There should be some maintaining balance, 2000 is usually just a maintaining balance for ATM account. Savings account should have at least 5k-10k maintaining. It's in the bank terms and condition that you'll have some penalty charge for going below the maintaining balance.

Yes,

[walesrob]

So please beware if you go below 2,000 your account will be closed.

Did they return the 1000php?

I have an HSBC Savings Philippines account with only 5000php balance, haven't touched it for 2 years. They sent me a letter to notify new T & C's and any accounts with a balance of less than 50,000php will be closed as of September 2009, but mine seems to be open and I'm getting regular statements.

Banks in the Philippines seem to favour only the well off, if your poor, they don't wanna know, and whats sad is that there are no alternative basic banking facilities available to those with a small income. Probably why the Philippines still deals mainly in cash for most day to day transactions as opposed to the UK where most transactions are via debit or credit card.

[SteveTalaga]

...They sent me a letter to notify new T & C's and any accounts with a balance of less than 50,000php will be closed as of September 2009, but mine seems to be open and I'm getting regular statements...

Php50,000 Ouch - That's a lot to just have sat there not being spent!

[Sim11UK]

My wife just opened a PNB account, you need to keep a balance of 5000 php.
She also has BDO account, but I think she may have gone under the minimum requirement.

Interesting, when we went into a BDO branch, there were girls working there, carrying little baskets, full of 500 or 1000 php notes, great wads of them.
Openly putting them infront of us & putting them through the counting machines.

The 2 armed guards, on the door prevent you from doing anything silly.

[Arthur Little]

... they're not the ONLY ones!!! I would've gone too, with all the falderals involved in Phils' banking.

[September]

My wife just opened a PNB account, you need to keep a balance of 5000 php.
She also has BDO account, but I think she may have gone under the minimum requirement.

Interesting, when we went into a BDO branch, there were girls working there, carrying little baskets, full of 500 or 1000 php notes, great wads of them.
Openly putting them infront of us & putting them through the counting machines.

The 2 armed guards, on the door prevent you from doing anything silly.

Yeah, when I went to bank here, no one is on the door,no security guards, no gun from policeman, lovely ! isnt it?

[Sim11UK]

Yeah, when I went to bank here, no one is on the door,no security guards, no gun from policeman, lovely ! isnt it?

We never had guards here generally on the door, but banks used to be such serious places, with big wooden polished counters...now you go in them & they're very laid back, sometimes even have music playing.

Not really sure which I prefer?